Wayne King was a hugely successful bandleader, saxophonist, singer and composer whose orchestra played the sweet style of dance band and easy listening music which appealed to the broad spectrum of middle America during the 1930s and into the 1940s, so much so that he was widely referred to as The Waltz King. His career fell naturally into two halves, separated by his service in WWII, and his orchestra was popular through the post-war decades, but this anthology focuses on the first part of that career, when he had all his substantial tally of more than thirty chart hits.

This great-value 92-track 4-CD set comprises selected A and B sides from his releases for the Victor and Brunswick labels during these years, representing somewhere around half of the titles he recorded which were released across that initial era of his career. It includes almost all his hits, including the No. 1s Dream A Little Dream Of Me & Good Night, Sweetheart and the Top 5 hits The Waltz You Saved For Me, Wabash Moon, I Don't Know Why (I Just Do), Sweethearts Forever, The Moon Song, Trust In Me, Josephine, Souvenir De Vienne & Maria Elena, with a variety of featured vocalists, notably Buddy Clark. Its a substantial overview of his work and captures the spirit of a key strand of entertainment during the pre-war decade.

REVIEWS

“It's a 92 track 4CD release so once again Acrobat seem to have released the definitive collection of an enormously successful orchestra. These are vintage recordings and in some cases betray their age with inevitable surface noise, as the liner notes mention but this takes nothing away from what is not just entertaining dance music but a valuable historical document of a genre that virtually faded from public awareness.” – Gerry Stonestreet (In Tune Issue 331)